The General's Mistress

by Jo Graham

He laughed. “You can’t think of anything? Perhaps Red Ney is wooden after all!”

  “I’d know and you wouldn’t,” I said rather tartly.

  Corbineau grinned at me again. “No offense intended. I think the world of him, in truth. I’d follow him straight into the mouth of hell on horseback—he’s that good, and I ought to know, the son of a horse trader that I am. And there’s not a braver man or a better one to serve, even if he’s hard as hell on malingerers. But sometimes his dignity is just a priceless backdrop for a bon mot.”

  “And you always have one of those, don’t you?” I said. A joker, so that no one would know if his advances were intended or not. Unless they were taken up. Another stranger in this land.

  “I do,” Corbineau said. “But the battle will be joined within the next week or two, and you know who will be riding screen tomorrow. Damned if I’ll do that stone sober.”

  “Riding screen?”

  Corbineau spread his hands. “Light cavalry fans out in front of the line of march, staying just in sight of each other. We scout the terrain and, most importantly, we look for the enemy. Usually we find them. And when we do, we put our spurs to it and get back as fast as we can. If we can. Because they send out cavalry skirmishers to do the same thing.” He interlaced his fingers. “And sometimes we cross like that, our screen and theirs.”

  “I see,” I said, imagining the cold woods and the tension, waiting for a movement that would mean something.

  “It’s been raining on and off for weeks,” Corbineau said. “The mud is almost knee-deep in places. And it hasn’t been cold enough for everything to freeze solid. It’s pleasant, let me tell you.”

  “I see,” I said again. There was some part of me that wanted to try it, rather than ride with the baggage train.

  “A keen lad?” His eyes twinkled.

  “Something like that,” I said. “It’s hardly fair you should get all the fun.”

  “If you get bored being a servant, you could be a chasseur,” Corbineau said. “You’d pass as long as no one looked under your tunic. But I suppose your general wouldn’t like that.”

  “I suppose he wouldn’t,” I said. But I wondered if I could do it anyway.

  Michel was late coming in that night, carrying his map case with him and opening it on the table upstairs in the bedchamber. I sat up in bed, wearing one of Charles’s shirts, watching him. As he leaned over the map, light from the single candle gleamed on his hair, on the braid at his shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Fixing the positions in my mind.” He looked around at me. “Do you want to see?”

  “Isn’t it secret?” I asked, getting out of bed.

  “There’s no reason you can’t see what half the army will see before tomorrow.” I looked over his shoulder as Michel smoothed the map out. “There are two roads,” he said, “the one from here to Munich, and the one from Munich to Wasserburg. They both pass through the forest of Hohenlinden, here and here. The Austrians must use the roads to move as many men as they have, with all their guns and equipment. There are footpaths through the forest as well, but none of them are suitable for a wagon or a gun.”

  “How many men do they have?” I asked.

  Michel looked at me sideways. “Our best estimate is around sixty thousand men. To our total of fifty thousand or so, nine thousand of which are mine. Not such great odds. And they have many more cannon.”

  I looked at the map, and it seemed for a moment I had seen it before, stretched out in candlelight like this, an iron candlestick weighting it instead of pewter, forest and roads engraved fine. “But if they must keep the guns on the roads,” I said slowly, “then they can’t use them easily, and not at all except there.”

  “Exactly,” Michel said. “And so we must get around behind them while they are in column, advancing, and at the same time hold them here, at the village of Hohenlinden, where the road leaves the woods and crosses the river here.” He pointed. “General Moreau’s plan is for us to move the main body down here to wait, and send Richepanse’s men around to flank.”

  “A waiting game?” I asked. “That’s like Moreau.”

  “He’s good,” Michel said. “Whatever I think of him privately, he’s as good as they say he is.” He let go of the edge of the map and it rolled up. He carefully rolled it the rest of the way and put it in the case. “The problem is,” he said, as he sat down on the edge of the bed to take his boots off, “we don’t know exactly where the Austrians are.”

  I thought of the lieutenant, going off at dawn to screen in front of the army. “I imagine we’ll find them, won’t we?”

  Rather, they found us.

  The next day was cloudy and cold, with the whisper of snow in the air. It smelled like snow, though not a flake fell.

  We were between the first halt and the midday halt when a furor erupted toward the head of the column, a sudden rolling echo of shots loud enough to startle all the roosting birds, which took off out of the fir trees into the sky. It was the first time I had heard firing in volley.

  Nestor didn’t even prance when I hauled him up sharply in my surprise.

  In the wake of the shots came the yells, one shrill shriek and a great many shouts. Then came sporadic shots in reply.

  In the back of the baggage train, there was a great deal of swearing as horses shied and teams fouled their reins. Some people started rushing forward and some started rushing back. The only thing I could think was that Michel had been at the head of the column as usual, glittering with braid, an obvious target.

  Something ran through me, the same elongation of time, and an utter lack of fear. I had Auguste Thibault’s epée, and I drew it left-handed, the reins in my right hand.

  “Come on, Nestor,” I said, and touched my heels to his sides.

  It wasn’t very far. The Twenty-Third Infantry Demibrigade had been thrown back in disarray at the first volley, which had been straight into their flank as they came over the crest of a hill in the forest. The Austrians were in the woods. Now they charged out en masse, bayonets fixed, into the carnage and confusion.

  “Shit,” I said, as I saw the one who had marked me. He had very light gray eyes, running over the muddy ground.

  And then I was lunging forward, pulling to the right so that at the last moment I passed him on the wrong side, the off side where a cavalryman doesn’t want you—unless he’s left-handed. It threw him for a split second. That was the second that mattered. A squeeze, and Nestor went halfway up, his weight on the descent adding momentum to the thrust of the epée, hitting the Austrian full in the breastbone with the point. The impact tore the sword out of my hand.

  I pulled Nestor round in a hard circle. The man stood there almost stupefied, the epée protruding from his chest. His hand opened, and his musket and bayonet dropped to the ground. I made a grab for the sword and got the hilt, the blood spurting as I pulled it free.

  Nestor went up again. To my right, an Austrian was trying to get at us with fixed bayonet without getting close enough to Nestor’s hooves. I swung him around, keeping his belly clear. My sword rang against the bayonet’s blade, parrying just as I had been taught. Strike, strike, a double beat with the forte, a disengage to the left faster than anyone could do with something as ungainly as a musket. A thrust that opened a wound down the side of his face and neck, the epée sliding almost cleanly through flesh.

  And then we were past him, plunging among our infantry. They were rallying into line.

  Michel’s voice cut through the din. “Don’t unlimber that gun, you sons of bitches! Get the hell back! We’re covering your retreat. That gun is worth more than your sorry lives!”

  Relief flooded through me. His hat was gone, and Eleazar’s white stockings were splashed with gore. His face was as red as his hair, and his aide and two cavalrymen were trying to keep up. The four of them charged into a knot of Austrians who were reloading, and I charged after.

  One of them brought his musket up, half-finishe
d, and fired. The ramrod went straight through the cavalryman to the right, standing out from his back a handsbreadth. He swayed and pitched from the saddle.

  I took the infantryman, who was looking at his gun in astonishment. He never saw me cut him down.

  And then Michel was stirrup to stirrup with me. He grabbed my reins. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “What does it look like?” I shouted back, my bloodied epée in my hand, my glove soaked through with someone else’s blood. “You do your job and trust me!”

  Something passed over his face, and he gave me a brisk nod. “I do,” he said, letting go of my reins. He raised his voice. “The One Hundred Third to the fore! Everybody else, get your butts back out of the way. I want the Twenty-Third in line behind. You there! Get on over there! Any stray cavalry, come with me!” He looked at me. “It’s the main body of the Austrian army to our nine thousand men.”

  Michel turned away. “Form up! We’ve got to get those skirmishers out of the wood line. Ruffin, who are those chasseurs? If they’re here, they’re with me.”

  There were six of them, one of them the lieutenant with the dapple-gray mare, Corbineau.

  At the edge of the wood there was a sudden flash of light and smoke, an instant before the crashing sound of the volley. It was fifteen or twenty men, but it sounded like the vast army that was rolling up the road at a marching pace, bayonets fixed. The main body. Sixty thousand men on nine thousand.

  A bugler sounded charge, and Nestor leapt forward with the rest, straight into their guns.

  But they had already fired. Only one shot sang past me, someone reloading too slowly for the volley. I didn’t think it hit anything.

  And then we were among them. The dapple mare plunged in front of me, taking down a man with her hooves and teeth, almost dancing. Corbineau’s face was set, his own teeth bared.

  I got one of them in the arm, the point straight into the fleshy part of the upper arm, and saw the blood bloom on his coat. He dropped his musket, and then I was past him, ducking under heavy fir branches that tore at my sleeves and hair.

  “Turn! Recall!” Michel was shouting, presumably in absence of the bugle signal. I swung about, finding myself once again beside Corbineau as we emerged again from the woods.

  Off to our left, the entire Austrian army came on in perfect ranks, regiment upon regiment along the road, bayonets fixed and muskets loaded, every step in drill-perfect precision, lined up from here to heaven knew where. To our left, our artillery was towing the last of the field guns away as fast as possible, and four ranks of infantry waited, the first rank kneeling, holding their fire for range.

  Michel galloped toward our ranks, calling out something to an officer standing at the end, and the rest of us followed.

  Corbineau glanced at me and his eyes widened. “Charles?”

  “It’s me,” I said, taking off my bloody glove to wipe the sweat from my face.

  “I love a lady who likes it hot,” Corbineau said with a grin.

  “I’m no lady,” I said. I felt exalted. No opium, no hashish had ever had the power to make me feel this way, light as a cloud and made of fire. It was like sex and joy and the primal urge of childbirth, like being wind off the mountain, like being chained lightning. Only the barest bit of sense kept me from charging straight into the Austrian army.

  “Cavalry, get back!” Michel shouted. We were between our men and the approaching Austrians. The range was still too great, but it was closing.

  We spurred forward, passing through a gap in the ranks between companies. The infantry gave us a cheer. We had given them time to form up. Now they would fight a rearguard action to give our column time to escape.

  Michel sat on Eleazar just behind the fourth rank, his aide Ruffin beside him. Eleazar’s breath came in great clouds of steam in the frosty air.

  Closer and closer, their feet marking time.

  Michel raised his sword. The infantry officers watched him. It would be death to fire too early, and would waste the shot.

  Something blurred my vision. I put my hand to my face and felt it melt, the first snowflake. I looked at Corbineau. A white flake clung to the shoulder of his blue tunic. Another drifted down between us.

  “Snow,” he said.

  “Yes.” I didn’t quite understand why he was grinning.

  With a crash like thunder, our first line opened up. The powder smoke rolled back toward us with the wind in a great stinking cloud. They knelt to reload, the second rank stepping forward.

  A shouted order, and a hundred muskets blazed in the smoke. I could see nothing of whether or not the shots told.

  Then there was the crash of the reply. I heard screams, but they could have come from anyone. The Austrians couldn’t pick out targets in the smoke, only fire in the general direction of our men.

  Again our guns crashed. The third rank, I supposed.

  The heavens opened and the snow came down thick and fast, as though the sound of our guns had cracked the clouds. It swirled on the wind, powder-scented.

  There was movement. Our ranks were retreating slowly, each rank as it fired backing off and waiting for the others to pass through in their turn, a fighting retreat. Again the guns blared.

  I couldn’t see the Austrians, had no idea what was happening.

  “We should back off,” Corbineau said, “stay behind the last rank in case we need a countercharge against cavalry.”

  “Is that likely?” I said. I could imagine what he meant, almost feel what it would be to do it.

  “Not so much in this,” Corbineau said. “They can’t see anything either.”

  I couldn’t imagine that anyone could. Between the rolling smoke and the flying snow, I could hardly see a length beyond Nestor’s head.

  Three times more our guns sounded. We were taking fire as well, farther forward. Three more times the ranks passed through to reload, and we backed up again, almost into the thick trees along the road.

  And then our guns went silent. For a moment, I could almost hear the swishing of the snow, starting to stick to the thick branches, sticking to my hair.

  A couple of infantrymen came past, half-dragging a friend between them. One of the caissons sat along the road, its team held tightly by a pair of privates. The infantrymen hoisted their friend up on the caisson.

  “Get the wounded back!” Michel shouted from somewhere ahead in the fog. “Everyone else, stay in line. Ruffin, what do you see?”

  Ruffin must have ridden out in front of the smoke, but I could not hear his reply. The guns remained silent. As the smoke thinned, I could see them standing like ghosts in the falling snow.

  “Pull back!” Michel shouted. “The One Hundred Third back behind the line of the Twenty-Third!”

  I could see the Twenty-Third up the road from us a bit, the brigade disordered on the first attack, now formed up waiting. Line by line, we backed up to them.

  Corbineau and I stood still and waited. Two of the officers of the Twenty-Third came forward to where we were.

  Michel and Ruffin rode back, following the second line of infantry. “They’re holding position,” Michel said. “I don’t think they’ve got pursuit orders. Which suggests they didn’t know where we were either, and we ran up on one another. If they’re waiting for pursuit orders from the Austrian command, they’ll wait a year and a day for them. Archduke Johann is uncertain and untried.”

  He looked from one face to another. “We’ll retire in order to Hohenlinden. Moreau can’t be far behind us.” He glanced at me, and I saw that he felt it too, this passion half-leashed by intellect. He would not go charging into the middle of the Austrians. But it was there. He looked like an angel of battles should look, bloody and bareheaded in the swirling snow, strange and familiar at the same time, obscene and beloved.

  Echoes of a Beating Drum

  We bivouacked that night half a mile from the village of Hohenlinden on the edge of the forest. Moreau’s men occupied the town, which was our headquarte
rs, and Ney’s men moved into position to hold the left. Other generals would have kicked a junior officer out of quarters in the town, but Michel did not want to be so much as half a mile away from his men, so his tent was set up in the camp.

  Settling in took a considerable amount of time. The snow was ankle-deep when it ended at nightfall, and by moonrise the night was clear and cold. Twenty-seven men had fallen in the skirmish, mostly men of the Twenty-Third who had been shot in the first few volleys. For the first time I saw the grave-digging details, heard the bugler play the final calls over a burial in the moonlight.

  I had not known any of them personally, and I stood back from the fires that had been kindled to keep the diggers warm and to light their work. Michel stood near one of the fires, and when it came his time as general to speak, he stepped out solemnly, the smoke unerringly flowing away from him, as though he had done this a thousand times before. Perhaps he had.

  The firelight played across his face, glittered on his gold braid and his hair, washing his face with light. It seemed to me for a moment it was some other face I saw there, in the light of a pyre for men I had not known, under these same wheeling stars. I could almost see him clearly, the prince of a people who were no more, brown hair pulled back from his face just so, a young face, a decade younger than Michel. How many times had I watched him thus? I wondered. It felt like a million, like a moment of touching eternity.

  I shook myself. I had closed those doors, I thought. I had said no more omens and half-remembered faces. But this was not frightening. This did not verge on madness. Instead, it seemed safe and familiar. Michel spoke different words, but the sense was the same—these are our comrades, we bid them farewell, farewell to the lost, until we meet again.

  Michel stepped back from the fire, and the gravediggers went to work filling in the graves. Twenty-seven more for his lists.

  I fell in beside him as we walked back to the camp, laid out in precise rows in the moonlight. There was none of the disorder I remembered from Moreau’s camp. This was the night after a small battle, with a greater looming on the horizon, a camp at watch, the men catching what sleep they could.